The time is right

Deuteronomy 5:1-3

   

          I took the liberty today of shortening the actual reading from the lectionary. This is a mere 3 verses, hardly that which makes for a rousing sermon. I will try to make a small point.

          Today on Yahoo news, there was an article about 'rethinking gay marriage'. The Bishop of Salisbury, the Rt Rev Nicholas Holtam, pointed out that scripture had been used to justify slavery as well as apartheid. I would point out that scripture has also been used to keep women strictly subservient to their husbands, keep them without education and essentially barefoot and pregnant and not much more than chattel. It's all there in scripture so it must have been OK, right?

           Well, no, not at all, really. We now realize the moral implications of some our interpretations. We see that scripture was interpreted wrongly, too narrowly and without love. We have grown by the grace of the Holy Spirit.

           So in this passage, why didn't God make a covenant with Moses' ancestors? Why did he wait for Moses? Why didn't we just have Jesus come along a thousand years earlier? Why did Jesus come to earth when he did? Did you ever wonder about that? Almost everything in life is timing. It is so true and it's the basis for many TV episodes and movies. Notably a Star Trek episode called "The City on the Edge of Forever" and who can forget the Jimmy Stewart Movie "It's a Wonderful Life". Timing is everything.  My husband and I often have thought what would have happened had we met 30 years earlier? (The answer is, we wouldn't be the same people that fell in love when they did).

           Moses was given the laws at a specific time when the time was right. Jesus came to us at the right time in history as well. We have come to know that slavery is an evil, that apartheid is wrong. Now is the time, the time is right, for us to know, we are capable of understanding, that Gays are not evil. We know gay people are created by God as unique, special and are truly wonderful. Not everyone is gay but God created some of us that way and it is good. 

          The time has come, the time is right, we can undrestand, we can grow. Praise the Holy Spirit, praise revelation and God's never ending love.

Moses convened all Israel, and said to them:

Hear, O Israel, the statutes and ordinances that I am addressing to you today; you shall learn them and observe them diligently. The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. Not with our ancestors did the Lord make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive today.or